"No one’s heard from me," she said. "But I’ve never hidden anything or tried to be too mysterious. I’m pretty straightforward in my music. I always have been, and that hasn’t changed. With my songwriting, it’s taking a journey with what’s been going on in my everyday life — good, bad, ugly and everything in between. I feel like the right thing to do was just come out with something really honest."

Still, that's not to say a forthcoming LP will be a "heartbreak album." Life is too winding to apply such a narrow lens, she said.

"The sassy confidence, yes, that’s what I’ve kind of built my career on. But it also takes a lot of confidence and strength to be willing to be vulnerable,” she said. “And I feel like when you listen to ["Vice"], there’s really nothing to read into. It says what it says. Everybody has a vice. Everybody goes through a time in their life when they run to it a little bit more than when they don’t. When I’m journaling my life and putting it on paper to a melody and then allowing people to hear it, I can’t worry about what somebody might twist it into, because it’s not like I’m hiding anything."

That earnestness certainly came through Lambert's performance of "Vice" on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last night (August 4). "Just incredible, that voice," one YouTube user noted in a comment.

Shelton, conversely, has focused most post-divorce press appearances on an upswing: his subsequent relationship with Gwen Stefani. Shelton told Chelsea Handler in July that being with Stefani is the "happiest" he's ever been, and his May-released If I'm Honest frequently reflects as much.

What are your hopes for the next leg of Lambert's career? Sound off in the comments.